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Dying well - Australia's first not-for-profit funeral parlour

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: With the cost of standard funeral leaving little change from $10,000 it comes as no surprise that money - more than religion - is often uppermost in the minds of families when a loved one dies.

That's particularly true when those families are living on welfare payments.

But one community has taken matters into its own hands and is about to open funerals costing a fraction of that price through one of Australia's first not-for-profit, community run funeral parlours.

And as William Verity reports there may be lessons here about dying for all of us.

WILLIAM VERITY: It was seven years ago after her mother died that community worker Jenny Briscoe-Hough had her first encounter with the business of death.

JENNY BRISCOE-HOUGH: I was shocked by the cost of a funeral and I said well maybe we should just have, start a not-for-profit funeral service.

WILLIAM VERITY: From that day on the idea refused to die and preparations to set up Tender Funerals, one of Australia's first community run, not-for-profit funeral enterprises, became the subject of a 2013 documentary film called Tender.

Now finally Briscoe-Hough is ready to start her funeral preparations.

She is about to move in to a disused fire station in the industrial suburb of Port Kembla, an hour south of Sydney, having secured a low interest loan, philanthropic funding and more than $100,000 from the community.

JENNY BRISCOE-HOUGH: For me what Tender Funerals is about is about saying to people: you've got control over this process, what do you want to do? We'll work with you.

WILLIAM VERITY: She wants to reconnect people with the business of death and dying and take it out of the hands of medical practitioners and funeral directors.

JENNY BRISCOE-HOUGH: We are trying to say we are not going to equate the money spent on a funeral with love. We are trying to say love has got nothing to do with that.

WILLIAM VERITY: Her work has come to the attention of an arts organisation named Groundswell which is dedicated to making death an everyday part of life.

JESSIE WILLIAMS: There is a call from the community to actually bring conversations about death to life.

WILLIAM VERITY: Jessie Williams is on the board of the Groundswell Project and travelled to Port Kembla last week to lend her support.

JESSIE WILLIAMS: For the last 50 or so years loved ones have stopped dying in our homes, they have stopped dying in our communities. Most of us die in hospitals or in aged care facilities, so we recognised the medicalisation of the dying.

And so the community started to say well actually we want to have some choices around our final days.

WILLIAM VERITY: The idea of taking back control of dying and of grieving is an old-fashioned idea that is becoming modern once more thanks to the baby boomers.

JESSIE WILLIAMS: You know remember the Victorian ages I suppose of where you had the front parlour and mum or dad, their body, stayed in the front parlour and the family members came in and out of the home and had a conversation around the person, wept on top of the person, put their grief onto that person, which is appropriate.

WILLIAM VERITY: The idea of enlisting community support is one that has operated for years in another of Australia's most deprived communities among the homeless and destitute of Kings Cross in Sydney.

For more than 50 years, the Wayside Chapel has been an institution in the Cross, and marketing head Laura Watts applauds the changing face of funerals.

LAURA WATTS: We believe at the Wayside that every life, no matter what happened in it, deserves to end with dignity and everyone deserves to end with a standing ovation.

WILLIAM VERITY: It's a vision that Jenny Briscoe-Hough hopes will spread across Australian once Tender Funerals opens its doors for business by the middle of the year.

JENNY BRISCOE-HOUGH: I think it's pretty exciting because it's really about us saying we are able to keep on looking after that person through this final stage.

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: Community worker Jenny Briscoe-Hough ending that report by William Verity.

From the Archives

Around 500 Indigenous people fought in the First World War, and as many as 5,000 in the second. But many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander diggers who made it home received little or no recognition for their contribution. On Anzac Day, 2007, the first parade to commemorate their efforts and bravery was held in Sydney. Listen to our report from that day by Lindy Kerin.